At press time, Jack Lester, a New York City attorney who runs an eponymous firm, planned to sue Zohran Mamdani, the city mayor, on Thursday, Feb. 19, he told JNS.<\/p>\n
Lester, who has also sued the city over congestion pricing, told JNS that the suit is an effort to compel City Hall to release emails and other documents about Mamdani\u2019s executive orders in the early hours of his mayorship that revoked his predecessor\u2019s policies protecting Jews and barring boycotts of Israel.<\/p>\n
On Jan. 12, Lester filed a Freedom of Information Law request\u2014New York\u2019s version of the Freedom of Information Act\u2014to obtain the records. By state law, the city must acknowledge receipt of such a request within five days and provide the information, with certain exceptions, within 20 work days.<\/p>\n
Mandani\u2019s office denied the request and said that it needed to be directed to the city\u2019s law department. Lester filed an appeal, which was quickly denied. (JNS sought comment from Mandani\u2019s office.)<\/p>\n
Five members of the New York City Council, all Republicans, and 28 private citizens holding a range of political views and affiliations have signed onto the suit that he intends to file in New York State Supreme Court.<\/p>\n
Mamdani\u2019s first executive order, which revoked all of his predecessor\u2019s orders in the prior 15 months, axed the city\u2019s recognition of the widely used International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of Jew-hatred and its ban on boycotting Israel.<\/p>\n
Lester told JNS that the mayor did so \u201cin a vacuum without any rationale, studies or impact statements.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019d like to know what public policies will result, what impacts on the purchase of Israeli bonds there will be, educational policies, and public safety policies,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is a broad area of impacts that have been left without any sort of comment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Retired wealth manager Jeffrey Weisenfeld previously worked in city government under Democratic mayor Ed Koch, in state government under Republican governor George Pataki and with Republican senator Al D\u2019Amato. He feels clear about what the mayor\u2019s objectives were in immediately reversing the city policies relating to Jews.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe sent a signal\u201d to anti-Zionists and antisemites, Weisenfeld told JNS.<\/p>\n
Mamdani\u2019s \u201cbifurcation of Jews from Israel is a very dangerous thing. For most of us Judaism is both the covenant and the land\u201d of Israel, he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not for him to define Judaism, just as we don\u2019t define Islam.\u201d (The Uganda-born mayor is Muslim.)<\/p>\n
The lack of substantive response to the FOIL request shows that \u201cthere must be something there,\u201d Weisenfeld told JNS. \u201cI\u2019m pleased it\u2019s getting to a formalized lawsuit that highlights protections that he\u2019s not providing for Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lester told JNS that he is working on the case pro bono, because he felt angered by Mamdani\u2019s first action as mayor.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that he did it as his first act as mayor was a slap in the face to the entire Jewish community,\u201d Lester told JNS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At press time, Jack Lester, a New York City attorney who runs an eponymous firm, planned to sue…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":["post-139280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}